Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 6, Mapping on Your Desktop

#75 Share Your GRASS Maps with the World

HACK

Publish GRASS Maps as PostScript Files

Generating PostScript images from GRASS isn’t quite as straightforward as

generating PNGs, but the results will often look a lot nicer. The ps.map util-

ity provided for this purpose is classic GRASS: it’s flexible, powerful, and

utterly arcane. ps.map is driven by a “little language” for display scripting

that, when fed to GRASS, will generate PostScript code. With ps.map, you

can add color tables, legends, custom fonts, and scale indicators, all the

visual trappings of professional looking print cartography.

Figure 6-46 shows a PostScript map of selected nodes from SFLan, a com-

munity wireless network based in San Francisco. The map was made with

TIGER/Line street data, National Elevation Data obtained from the USGS

SDDS, and, of course, ps.map. The contour lines were generated in the fash-

ion described in “Make Your Own Contour Maps”

[Hack #73].

Figure 6-46. A map of San Francisco generated with ps.map

Share Your GRASS Maps with the World #75

Chapter 6, Mapping on Your Desktop

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HACK

Example 6-1 shows the set of ps.map commands used to tell GRASS to gen-

erate Figure 6-46.

Example 6-1. sf_tiger.txt: ps.map commands used to generate Figure 6-46

1 raster dem

2

3 vpoints sflan ...